Then she picked up her chopsticks and began shoveling pieces of sushi into her mouth like a bulldozer. Fang gaped, letting some sushi fall from his chopsticks. This girl was rail thin, and she was putting away more than he and Max could eat—combined. And that was really saying something.
“Will there be anyone else?” Star said, slapping down her chopsticks. She’d managed to eat half the menu in thirty seconds without getting a single drop of sauce on her crisp white blouse.
“Yes,” Fang said. “At the hotel. And you also mentioned you had a friend?”
Star nodded. “Kate. She goes to my school. She won’t be here for a while yet. She’s strong, but I’m fast.”
“Guess so,” Fang said. “You got here way sooner than I expected. Weren’t you coming down here from almost twenty miles north?”
Star shrugged. “I ran.”
“In those shoes?” Ratchet snorted. “That’s likely.”
Fang had to wonder. After all, a twenty-mile run would’ve had to result in at least a minor sweat, if not a few stray hairs. But Star looked yearbook-photo ready.
“Show us, Star,” Fang said with a faint smile of curiosity.
And that was how they ended up “drag racing” until the wee morning hours. Except that it was Fang’s wings against Star’s feet against Ratchet in a hot-wired Camaro. Star got so bored with winning after a dozen races that she started to give the guys a head start. The more they lost, the more they wanted to win, until Ratchet couldn’t stand the embarrassment anymore.
“I give up,” he yelled, climbing out of the car and slamming the door extra hard.
“Me too,” Fang said, out of breath as he landed, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow.
“So did I pass my audition?” Star asked, with no bead of sweat on her brow to wipe.
“Just barely,” Fang grinned. “Okay, folks. Let’s get this girl another boatload of sushi. She must be starving.”
17
WHEN THE FUSELAGE hit the ground and exploded, I saw my future right below me, just seconds away. My wings were burning, as I gulped air, my muscles shaking from the strain of keeping us both aloft. We were going to land hard—and soon.
“Max!” my mom cried, looking down in horror. For her, Jeb was almost out of sight, dropping to earth like an unaerodynamic rock. Unfortunately for me, because of my raptor vision, I could still make out his terrified expression with utter clarity.
“Gazzy couldn’t hold—” I started to say, but then something big dropped past me, actually brushing my feathers and bumping my feet. It was Dylan shooting down to Jeb.
“Go!” I shouted to Gazzy. “Help Angel!”
Gazzy angled his body in a tight arc that brought him close to the others with just a few strokes. He braced himself under Nudge, taking half her weight—possibly reducing her speed enough to keep her from imploding when she hit the ground. Angel focused on guiding Iggy down for what she hoped would be a less-than-fatal landing.
“When we get there, land on your feet, then fall sideways,” I told my mom.
Ordinarily, I do a running landing. I can also do a hover-type landing, which involves dropping down from the sky into a standing position. (Kids, don’t try that at home—you’ll pop your knees.) This time, I rolled sideways, way too close to the ground for comfort, to let my mom slide off me. She landed much harder than I expected and then didn’t move. Meanwhile, I tripped and plunged headlong, somersaulting a couple times and coming to a stop on my hands and knees like an amateur.
Right behind me, Dylan and Jeb did about the same. They were still alive, which was all we could really hope for at this point.
About twenty yards away, the ungainly mass of Nudge, Iggy, Angel, and Gazzy finally landed hard, sliding through the red Arizona dirt, then tumbling head over heels, ingesting mouthfuls of sand. Considering that I’d been sure Gazzy would end up being a big Rorschach blot on the ground, I thought they did real well.
I crawled over to my mom. “Mom? Are you okay?”
Gingerly she rolled over onto her back, shading her eyes from the blazing Arizona sun. “Well, actually, I think my arm’s broken,” she said. My eyes flew to the arm pinned beneath her. It was bent at an unnatural, nauseating angle. I gently reached for her other hand, her face ashen, her mouth tight with pain.
“And my leg,” Jeb said, grimacing.
“Nudge?” I said. “Iggy?”
“Bleeding,” Iggy said faintly. “Don’t think I can move my wings anymore.”
“Me neither,” said Nudge, sounding like she was trying not to cry.
“I’m fine,” Dylan offered. Then I caught sight of the other side of his face. It was caked with dust and pebbles, blood still oozing, and his lip was split.
“Okay. We need help,” I admitted.
Not something you’ll hear from me every day.
18
WE’RE NOT FANS of regular hospitals. “We can patch everyone up at my office, do x-rays, put on casts,” my mom said. That way, we didn’t have to worry about explaining the whole wing situation or the fact that we have bird-type blood—ix-nay on any anfusions-tray.
I unclipped my cell phone from my belt and handed it to her so she could place a rescue call to her colleagues.
Nudge and Iggy were still bleeding as we waited for help from my mom’s office to arrive. I pushed Nudge’s hair back from her dusty, scraped face, still shaky from how close to the end we had all come. Gazzy was exhausted, with pulled muscles and banged-up hands and knees. My chest and back muscles ached, and that sliced tip of my wing was sore—but just a little bit. I’d gotten off easy.
“So… no one saw what happened to the good doctor?” I asked.
Everyone shook their heads no. I turned to Dylan.
“And where were you, newbie? Why didn’t you jump out of the plane right after Jeb? Was Dr. Hans still in the plane when you jumped?”
Dylan grimaced and nodded. He walked stiffly as if in pain, but everything seemed to be functioning. His face and lip were already scabbing up, since he’d been engineered with the ability to heal himself. “The plane spiraled back and headed into the wires again. If I’d jumped out, I’d have been sliced into deli strips. I yelled at Dr. Hans to jump, but he pushed me out first. Last I knew, he was right behind me, but then he never jumped. I banged my face on the way out.”
“Klutz.” I snickered, then felt a tiny bit guilty. Dylan had helped everyone else out of the doomed plane, at his own peril. I had to give him props, but how annoying of him to be a hero when I was trying so hard to dislike him. It was downright selfish.
“I want to make sure you don’t have a concussion, Dylan,” my mom said wanly.
Dylan shook his head. “Sorry—I’m not going back with you. I’ve gotta find what’s left of Hans and the plane. Thought I would do some recon after you guys head off.”
“I’d feel better if you had an x-ray,” my mom protested.
“Later,” Dylan promised. “There’s no way I can let this go. I have to find Hans, if only so we can send his body back to Germany.”
I understood where he was coming from. There were so many ifs, buts, and maybes in our topsy-turvy world, it was comforting to nail down as many details as possible. Even if that meant finding his unquestionably evil creator in pieces.
“Max, you’ll come with us, won’t you?” my mom said, her face drawn with pain.
I wanted to say, “Yeah, of course,” but the words got stuck in my throat. I paused for a moment, thinking, then had a stunning realization—and this is just between you, me, and this cactus here. I didn’t want to let Dylan go off on his own.